


How Team Cheese Attack Got Their Summons

by RainofLittleFishes



Series: The Town Dump: A Social Occasion for Crossovers & Fusions [2]
Category: Homestuck, Naruto
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Homestuck characters in the Naruto verse, M/M, Multi, OT3, Summoning, Suna Village, Team as Family, Tiny!Sollux, fart jokes, ninjastuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is, of course, Mituna, that buys the shabby antique scroll off of an overly smiley vendor in Ice country. And it is Mituna that insists that as the team seal expert, you should thoroughly examine it and see if it actually does what the vendor claimed. </p><p>You tell him that the vendor claimed it cost two gold and that that certainly wasn’t inaccurate but that you doubt the rest. </p><p>Latula frowns at you. You might as well be mired in Rain country’s famous quicksand; you really don’t have a choice after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Team Cheese Attack Got Their Summons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabaku_no_gaara_ai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaku_no_gaara_ai/gifts).



There is really nothing remarkable about you at all. Of course civilians think all shinobi… _different_ – odd, or dangerous, or somehow romantically tragic and exciting (titillating one night stands, not someone you bring home to Mother), but you’re short, and all brown and tan, hair to skin to eyes, and not in the least one of the _showy_ sorts. Boring, really, and that’s how you hope most nin see you as well.

Mituna is closer to the civilian ideal, tall, wiry, animated on and off duty, filthy mouthed and flirty minded. A little bit magnificent in that way gregarious people are, but still properly dangerous, properly strong. A civilian might look at his overgrown hair and sharp teeth, his uniform worn with use, and think, _just a little bit feral_. A nin would know better than to think that a condemning sort of judgement. Animalistic or a seductive kunoichi “mistress”, all nin are deadly in their own ways. Mituna is a blade, just as all of you are, and the important part is that his sharp edges aim to cut your enemies and not your allies, though often enough the village is full of its own dangers.

The both of you inherited something of your unknown fathers’ lines, but his is more obvious, lightning affinity from lightning country, some sort of unnamed gift like and unlike chakra strings, all a gift to the village that his mother brought back in the standard kuniochi way of expanding the village bloodlines with infusions of outside blood, the more exotically useful the better.

Mituna can move things with his mind, kunui, shuriken, your whole team. It’s not quite the same thing as chakra strings, or a relocation or swap jutsu. It’s not shunshin. Your genin teacher never could determine exactly how he does it, even if you all exhausted yourselves repeatedly finding his limits and then pushing them further. He’s fast and funny and more honest than you can ever manage to be. He’s unashamed, and you envy that, but not him. Years of teamwork have at least succeeded in grinding down your sharper emotional edges until the old envies are now just old jokes.

Latula kisses you sometimes, in bed, or in passing, even if you’ve never gone much further than that between the two of you, even if what you know of physical intimacy is their bodies moving together, even if you’ve watched targets complete their last orgasms and learned the differences between making love and fucking in the _how_ of it.

When she thinks you’re thinking too hard, grinding over old issues with no resolution and only a deeper track in your mind, she leans against you, but she doesn’t push at your boundaries, not unless you ask. They know you well enough that you don’t need to say it aloud. Mituna will try to push you out of such mental ruts with a spar and if the spar should end with him sitting on you, as happens all too often when your best moves are fatal, maiming, or just slow enough to need a teammate to provide a distraction, well, then it usually ends with him rubbing his bony knuckles into your scalp. He’ll kiss you in bed, or drape himself over you, smothering, but outside those all too rare moments, there is only this, and you savor it, wait for the moment of inattention to flip him and activate the seal you’ve been priming while he gloats. You suspect he lets you. That just means you can get creative and practice new seals. You were luckier than you knew when you received your genin assignment.

You are not sure what peculiarities of your body and talents came from your likely long-dead sire, and what are some long dormant Sand talents sleeping in your mother’s lines. Mituna’s mother and your own could almost be sisters, both cut from the same Sand village cloth, slender as sticks, wizened by sun and almost perpetual thirst more than age and duty, tanned leathery skin, dark hair, fingers competent in all manner of tasks from killing to the gentle no-nonsense swipe of drying a child’s tears.

All three of you, in long ago “team building exercises”, (that is, _we’re genin now, we can drink)_ had discovered a shared early memory of motherly admonishment not to waste fluid on tears. _The desert can drink until there is nothing left of us,_ your mother had said, and if it was soft, it was also implacable. You may have cried since, but rarely, and the only witnesses would no more betray you than you them. Your teammates are your better selves. Your first kill is beyond witnessing anything. Your genin teacher did her duty and moved on.

You are solid and short, _steady_ , and your blunt fingers are scarred over with years of practice and fieldwork. A civilian might overlook you, but no nin would, not without further efforts on your part, and you don’t bother, knowing that badly blending in is far more suspicious than merely being an unremarkable nin. Few Sand village civilians would overlook your training now. Sand village civilians are scarcely civilians at this point, not after so many years of living in the den of the One Tail.

Of the three of you, Latula is the only one who might easily pass as a civilian, and much of that is the odd civilian obsession with separating the sexes into different spheres of assumed competence. There are plenty of nin who might shout something crass and taunting at a kunoichi, but not a one of them fails to realize that one is just as dead whomever wields the blade. Or poison. Or bizarre bloodline trait.

Latula’s parents are the odd ones, at least among nin, both passing as civilians with what appears to be ease. Her parents are married and mission partners as well, specializing in long-term infiltration, the kind that usually end with them coming home with another sibling to join the herd, sometimes bloodkin, sometimes… _acquired_. Latula is the oldest, and Terezi the bossiest, and Chika, Haru, Shin, Jiro, and Yua will all no doubt be formidable by the time they graduate the academy, at some point after Yua is out of diapers, one presumes. They are also loud, and when you need quiet you make sure not to linger visiting Latula’s home, or you’ll get roped into babysitting fledgling nin.

Without the ferocity of intent, bladed projectiles are hard to sense without outright seeing them. Mituna insists that it’s good training, to which you insist that he’s confusing cause with effect. Babysitting successfully (no permanent injuries, everyone gets fed and watered, property damage under a genin mission worth) usually results in enthusiastic physical overtures from Latula. You are long since resigned to the fact that your teammates mostly consider free time (not to be confused with training time) a chance to explore more adventuresome (that is, forbidden or dangerous) places to make love.

*

Mituna likes spicy food and cheese, and almost always only indulges in either outside of missions, when the resulting odor is less likely to be fatal, no matter how rank. Mituna at home far too often smells like pepper-sweat and the unholy alchemy of dairy product and dairy intolerance. Even Latula will shove him over to your side of the bed on one of his Cheese Nights, miasma and all.

Still sleep-addled, you’ll shape your stout but steady fingers into the necessary signs to tap into one of your seal tattoos. Air purification, ventilation. _Ah_. It’s wind country, a breeze jutsu is a fairly typical thing to learn as a genin, used often enough for hunters, but of little use in flashy fights. Latula’s not much good at them, but she excels at things you do not. It’s one of the reasons that the three of you are a chunin _team_ and not three chunin, alone.

You’ll start to drift off again as Mituna groans and head-butts you, maybe wraps his long arms around you in the heat. _Kankriiiii, it hurrrrts_. You cannot argue, this happens every time. And every time he swears it’s worth it until he’s huddled here and you know that there’s no escape. It’s not that you want him to be in pain, or that you hope the hundredth example will be more effective than the first ninety-nine, but you don’t want to wake up and you do not allow yourself to work on your teammate still half-asleep. Seals are a tool, and any tool can turn on the wielder if it is not shown respect.

You’ll sit up and let sleep drain away until you can safely shape the signs that activate another tattoo, put your hands on him, and channel the resulting delicate and very, very specific medical jutsu. You have a torso full of such seals, each a tool for a certain result, things for hunting, and fights, and after fights, and more than a few practical things of your own preference, like scroll copying and storage and whatnot, but not many people get much of a look at them, not outside your teammates. Fewer still have the necessary medical and sealing knowledge to translate what is essentially a dairy digestion aid for outside application.

You call this seal _The Wheel of Cheese Regret_. Latula calls it _The Fart Charmer_. Mituna calls it _Hell Yeah, Paneer_ , and the tiny Grass country grandma who runs his favorite food stall always smiles extra sincerely when Mituna stops by to order dinner and flatter her outrageously. You would be embarrassed, but you once completed a mission as a young genin team that only succeeded because the target was caught off-guard by Sudden Cheese Attack. Also, Mituna has very big eyes under the seedpuff frizz of his hair.

*

Mituna has one sibling, Sollux, who is also the product, or at least souvenir, of their mother’s missions. Mituna’s father came from lightning country. As for Sollux’s, his mother is closemouthed on the topic, but you’re nin, you gossip and call it intel.

Sollux is a mouthy brat but he has a sweet tooth of such epic proportions that when fanning his ego doesn’t work to get him to behave, sugar of any sort will do. He’s also mad for any and all sealing arts and you mostly try to give him a firm enough base that he won’t go diving into trouble until he’s ready for it. He’s not yet genin but on the academy’s last fieldtrip, he came home with a hive of bees, and has since tended them faithfully. No one has yet complained as they have been busy in the gardens and haven’t managed to sting anyone yet. You’re pretty sure they are not _normal_ bees, but it’s a topic about which you don’t profess to know much. Maybe Mama Captor got it on with one of the Leaf nins’ insect clan. You’ve heard that they don’t actually have eyes. In the privacy of your mind, or among your teammates, you can admit that that freaks you out, but there are creepier things among the Sand clans.

*

It is, of course, Mituna, that buys the shabby antique scroll off of an overly smiley vendor in Ice country. And it is Mituna that insists that as the team seal expert, you should thoroughly examine it and see if it actually does what the vendor claimed. You tell him that the vendor claimed it cost two gold and that _that_ certainly wasn’t inaccurate but that you doubt the rest. Latula frowns at you. You might as well be mired in Rain country’s famous quicksand; you really don’t have a choice after that.

Mituna might lead the charge, but Latula keeps your team in tune, in time. Your sealing arts aren’t designed for melee but Latula keeps the three of you working as a cohesive unit and not three parts at odds with one another. Latula’s the planner. On missions, and elsewhere, Latula’s is the voice, the _will_ , to be obeyed without delay. In matters of mundanity, daily life, and takeout, she’s the deciding vote, the one who makes sure that you don’t let Mituna guilt you into getting his favorites yet again when you haven’t had yours in a while. Latula takes care of you both.

It still takes you several months to transcribe and rebuild the missing sections. The scroll claims it’s a summons scroll, _Fast/Just-in-Time/Heart-of-the-Matter of the Assured Walker; The Presence that is not There/The Sun of Knowing_. It’s hazy on the details of _what_ it actually summons. You can admit that you like the hand it was drawn in, bold but precise, the characters all intriguingly old and many requiring research to translate. The arrays have given you ideas that you’ve already incorporated into some of your own work, but you still don’t want to risk trying to summon whatever it is. You seal it in your library scroll, sink a copy into your far-deposit backup scroll, and deliberately think of it no more. Of course, you're not the only one that can access your drop box. 

Your teammates know you too well. You’re all headed home after a three month mission on the borders of Grass (Mituna still making ridiculous sad faces about how close all that delicious spicy food was, now left behind) and Latula takes out the Tent your first night in the sands.

The Tent is a remnant of your genin days, when all of you were first pushing to understand the limits of your abilities. It is not the first, but it is the most elaborate of the items you created and sealed away during those two and half years, six-sided, floored in wood, roofed in canvas, and _almost_ every thumb-length covered in seals so that no one but the three of you notice it, so that the wind does not push it over, so that it miraculously roots itself wherever it reincorporates. You didn’t actually finish it as genin, but you started it then, and so you count that it has been part of your team, your _way_ , from the time you started planning it. It’s a solidly planned piece, something that might become a clan heirloom if something doesn’t happen to it.

The ceiling gives off light when needed, or warmth. The walls provide air circulation when desired. Some esoteric and repurposed seals allow you to sense chakra, movement, and heat from inside without giving away anything to the outside. It’s not in any way related to battle, but it is a thing of beauty, scarcely noticeable from the outside as anything but a tiny twist of air. The most elaborate feature of the Tent, at least speaking as the one who designed the seals, is that it expands or shrinks according to need. It can fit the three of you. It can fit one prissy politician for escort duty. It can fit a whole train of merchants, and their carts and animals. You’ve had offers to buy it, or your secret. It’s well known that you can’t seal away living people or creatures if you want them to be living when they’re retrieved, but it’s not the same form of sealing, not at all, and the only way to protect a secret is not to tell. The Tent is yours. Not yours, as belonging-to-Kankri-Vantas, but yours as belonging to Team-Mituna-Latula-Kankri.

Mituna planed the wood and cut and fit it together with his bloodline limit, pieces collected and sealed for transport on a mission in Fire country years ago. Latula and you stitched the canvas together. All three of you did the seals, with you inspecting and correcting as necessary. Or sometimes just when it was _functional_ , but the processes could have been more elegant. _Almost_ every thumb-length is covered, but the middle of the floor is not. It is the perfect place to work on seals because the outer seals keep the sand out when mere walls can’t. Sometimes when you’re baby-sitting Latula’s kin you set it up in the courtyard between apartments and you dump some pillows and bedrolls in and let the kids duke it out for space with nothing to break.

Sollux loves to have the Tent mostly to himself, and he’ll copy seals from your basic scrolls accompanied by the soft hum of bees crowding over his shoulders as if to watch. He’s been trying to make amalgamation seals from his bees dancing, but has as of yet no success. You wish you could tell his bees apart, or know how long they live, because you can’t tell if they each know one seal or multiple seals, and that might make the difference. He’s still only six. You don’t want to give him too many dangerous ideas. He’s mostly been working with wind and water seals, but you’ll probably have to bridge to lightning seals soon, it _is_ his element.

It makes you the tiniest bit jealous of Mituna that he has a little brother to teach, but it’s the easily dismissed silly wistfulness of what-if, and not the dangerous jealousy of years past. Sollux chose you, or at least your field. (Somewhere you can admit that it is unhealthy how much your self-confidence rests on the arbitrary admiration of a six year old. Precocious. But _six_.) Mituna doesn’t appear capable of jealousy. Latula snaps pictures at home and just calls you all “hers”.

When Latula pulls out the Tent, you’re three days from home, two if you push it. There is one Tent, but just like your library and drop box all three of you can unseal it. Summon it. The truth is somewhere in between. They’ve been taking turns talking up your neglected summoning project and your own curiosity is wearing you thin.

When Latula starts to trace out the first seals from the transcribed summoning scroll, you elbow her out of your way and fix them, keep going. Maybe it’s a bad idea, but they seem determined, and you can admit that you’re curious.

You loop out the containment spells, the safety spells, and instead of directly summoning, opening a doorway, you open a message path. You’re not stupid. Most family summons still put the newest heir through at least _apparently_ life-threatening shenanigans.

A flame springs up in the innermost circle, normal in color, abnormal in its stillness.

“Greetings,” you venture.

The flame doesn’t change, still unnaturally still. You unseal one of your writing pads and write out the word instead, and feed it into the flame, which flares high and straight and devours it without ash. Mituna leans over your shoulder. “Smells like apples,” he comments, and you know without looking that his eyes are half closed and he’s half frowning in thought.

The next sheet of paper on your pad suddenly starts to fill, modern characters scratchy and blood red.

_yo bitches what up?_

_been a while_

_you forgot me?_

_you wouldnta forgotten me so quick right?_

_not the Flame not the Cog not the gods be damned Walker who set this verse in motion_

_names Dave_

_and to whom do i address this most grateful of addresses?_

You don’t respond immediately. Latula leans over your other shoulder. “Is there something lost in translation or is whatever it is just insane?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “That doesn’t mean it’s malicious, most nin are odd and I am unsure as to the average personality of summons, if there is such a thing.”

“Makes plenty of sense,” insists Mituna. “Dude’s been stuck a while.” He shakes his shaggy hair as if to shake off the memories of the months he spent in slow rehab after a head injury two years ago. That had terrified all three of you, and you were just grateful he could walk and talk after, let alone watch your back or play the tank on missions. You were uncommonly blessed.

“I am Kankri,” you write, leaving off your clan name or any mention of your companions. “I found your summoning scroll. What is your nature? What is your intent?” You pass the note into the flame.

_kankri my man_

_or woman_

_this here is an equal opportunity establishment_

_only the finest of whoopass and mouthsass served with pie and snacks_

_kankri my indeterminately gendered link to the outside world_

_what is the weather like_

“We are in the desert. It is currently sunny, with an exceedingly low chance of rain. I am male. Do you have a gender? Will you answer any of my questions?”

You pass the note into the flame. It leaps as before, straight up a few inches, and then back down once the note is consumed, flaring red for just a moment as it does, reminding you that this is no mere candle.

_kankri my man_

_the Dave is a dude_

_this dude is mellow like yellow and would just like to stretch his legs_

_metaphorically_

_i dont have legs now_

_havent for a while_

_what year is it??_

“It is the eighty-third year of the horse, nineteen years past the fall of Whirlpool, one hundred twenty three past the establishment of Leaf, three hundred eighty nine past the succession of Fire from Grass country.”

This is greeted with no further note for several minutes.

_year of the hoofbeast_

_is that one of 12?_

_like the hopbeast and the slitherbeast and the fuzzy horned hoofed grazing dudes?_

“They are generally thought of as the year of the hare, the snake, the tiger, the dragon, etc., but there are 12. Either goat or sheep is acceptable in lieu of fuzzy-horned-ungulate. Dave, what is your intent?”

You pass the note and the red flame almost nips you this time. You draw back by reflex, admonishing yourself for getting too comfortable.

_been asleep_

_between_

_dreaming of such_

_things_

_for a long_

_long_

_Time_

_…_

_dont get your manties in a twist kankly_

_just want a bit of fresh air_

_what do you want?_

_why did you open this little window and say_

_come visit?_

_you smell like a sea breeze_

_like water_

_didnt know how stuffy it was in here_

_until now_

_unchanging_

He doesn’t say, “ _Don’t go.”_ but that’s what you can taste. Something recently woken and now waking to desperate like a hunger wakes. You still do not know his intent.

“I am nin. I serve my village, my team, my family. Anything that can help me protect them should be investigated. Anything that threatens them must be assessed.”

_dealt with you mean_

_gotcha_

_a man after my own Heart_

_though gotta be honest here_

_not sure if you wanna deal with dirk_

_im much more handsome_

_:)_

You don’t know what to say then, so you just wait, surprised into a soft laugh at how he sounded like Mituna just then. You can hear a soft scratching behind you, but nothing that alerts your secondary attention, nothing that says, _this is dangerous, pay attention_. Minutes pass.

Mituna thrusts a full scroll through the flame before you can react, and pulls back as the flame flares orange and the scroll disappears.

Your notepad immediately starts to fill.

_Conditions accepted._

The writing is much more precise than Dave’s, bolder, bigger. Bright orange, with the exact same opacity and value of the red. Every hair on your body feels like it is on end.

The flame leaps orange for Mituna and he falls back as it hits. For a moment, all you can see is that last fall, the one that you weren’t sure he’d recover from. He rolls as he hits, pops back up like any one of thousands of times before, shakes his head, hair flying. He laughs, that stupid snort that you don’t think anyone could fake.

“Kanks, it’s fine. Mutual aid contract accepted. Won’t hurt anyone without our requesting it. They’re bored. Lonely. _Shut up Dirk, I can feel you in my head, that’s not tragic hero, that’s lonely, you sad sucker_.” He frowns and snort-laughs at something, _someone_ you can’t hear, and you look at Latula. She hands you a scroll.

“Babe jumped the flash-tag, but we made you a copy of the contract.”

You review it and the knot in your gut settles. Dirk couldn’t have jumped to Mituna if he meant any harm, the least bit of sway beyond words. There are multiple entities on the other side of the _window_. The reverse of the scroll has a signature from each, plus Mituna. Dirk. (Orange). Dave. (Red). Roxy. (Pink). Rose. (Soft Purple). There’s a soft orange blur that looks like wings, a harsh red set of twin triangles, an orange and green blur that’s just amorphous. You flip the scroll back over to the conditions again. There’s a second scroll, somewhere, if it hasn’t long since been destroyed. You will be looking for it, for a John and a Jade and a Jake and a Jane.

Mituna leans over your shoulder again and runs a finger over the names.

“Teammates,” he says, softly, and he leans further so he can look you in the eye, then he ducks and kisses you, closemouthed, just to the side of your lips, followed by blowing a fart noise against your cheek and rubbing his knuckles over your scalp as you push him away.

In exchange for their assistance, in and out of battle, on missions, in research, in the normal course of life, Mituna’s agreed to let them see through his eyes, feel what he touches, hear what he hears, taste what he tastes, smell what he smells. You have a sudden sympathy for Dirk, who has yet to experience a Sudden Cheese Attack from inside or outside. You also have a sudden suspicion that, for whatever reason Mituna thought he’d like a bit of skin contact with you, it wasn’t just _Mituna_ who needed it.

 _Teammates_.

It sounds like you’ll already be sharing the bed more than previously.

“Okay,” you agree, less reluctantly than you should, and Latula ruffles your hair and signs the copy scroll, runs her fingers through the flame like she’s collecting it up. You didn’t know that that would work, but sometimes she has intuitive moments like that. The flame flares pink and she turns and hugs Mituna, lifts him up like he doesn’t weigh thirteen stone, or like she doesn’t have to work twice as hard to gain and maintain muscle. She isn’t using any chakra that you can detect, but that isn’t just Latula, is it?

You sign your name and pass your own hand through the flame. Red. Soft purple. The flame goes out and you know that whatever was opened is closed now.

A sound that isn’t a sound lands in your head as if it came through your ears.

“ _yo_ ” is somehow indisputably Dave.

 _“It is lovely to make your acquaintance,”_ offers another voice, soft, controlled, with a taste of humor behind the blankness of a kunoichi at work.

_“I am Rose. Would you mind reviewing the modifications you made to the summoning scroll? I do not believe that these were the originals.”_

You have a sensation of caverns, deep, dark, secret, beautiful and perhaps deadly, like Mituna in his crafty moments, like Latula’s quietness among the three of you, like your own love of excavating forgotten techniques and turning them to something new and useful, something elegant.

You suddenly realize that this _means_ more than if it had been a regular summons scroll. You’ve heard of summons offering training, but you’ve never heard of one interested in _research_. This might not just have been a stupid side jaunt. This might actually be the beginning of something important.

 _“Aww. Is Rose already tempting you with her wild analytical wiles? Kankri, I totally had dibs for the first meal. Now it’s gonna be all, ‘_ and tell me about your culture, Kankri, yes, and why do you eat this in this order and how is this prepared, and what are the socioeconomic implications of farming in Grass country?’ _Later, dude.”_

You feel the leap as Dave leaves you, turn and somehow know that he and Dirk are both sharing headspace with Mituna now. Mituna doesn’t so much as shake his head, but you can see his lips move as he talks with them. Your classmates used to make fun of Mituna for mouthing the words when he read, but that ended when he regularly held his ground or beat them in practice. He’s in no way stupid.

You start to clean the summoning seals from the floor, and then you stop.

“Rose,” you think, trying not to mouth the words like Mituna. “There were three other signatures on the scroll. Are…” you stop to think of how to phrase it, unsure if she can read you anyway. “Are they alright?”

There’s silence in your mind, and then an impression of disquiet, sorrow, the straightening of shoulders.

_“They weren’t in the scroll. I don’t know what happened to them. Time doesn’t really pass for us inside it. Maybe they were reborn. Maybe…”_

You don’t push. “ _I_ ”. You know somehow that she doesn’t want to worry the others. You make a copy of the contract scroll and push it to your long distance drop seal, feeling her interest, _and_ her admiration. That makes you smile. You’re not above appreciating being appreciated. Latula, Mituna, and their… _riders_ are all over each other, palm-to-palm, forehead-to-forehead and you needlessly announce that you’ll take first watch. You push through the door and hike to a far enough distance to keep the tiny twist of air that is the Tent in view and have an open sight-line all around. You flick out the standard Sand notice-me-not with your own minor modification as you go, then settle in to watch.

Rose spends the night telling you about Jade and John in exchange for tidbits about the politics of Wind country, leaving you enough to know that you’ll have to ask Roxy about Jane or Jake, that you’d have to pull metaphorical teeth to get anything out of Dirk.

You relay cautious bits about Mituna and Latula, about Sollux, Latula’s clan. You don’t trust Rose the way you would your teammates, not with the knowledge that in any situation you know exactly where everyone is and what angle they’re working on, but you don’t _distrust_ her either. If they mean you harm, if they can fake these impressions, you’re beyond rescue anyhow. You stay up past your watch and into Mituna’s, until he comes out on his own and takes a swipe at your hair.

You catch his arm.

“They’re old,” you say, and you’re not really telling him, just, just _confirming_.  

“Old as balls,” he confirms, agreeable, shifting his arm to hold you back. You lean towards him and he lets you, shifts to wrap his arm over your shoulder, tucks his head over yours. “Older than the Fire daimyo’s mother’s saggy rack. Older than Wind _country_.” His laugh is low this time, almost silent, and it’s one of the most comfortable things in the world to feel it reverberate from the front of his ribcage to the back of yours.

You stay like that for a moment, until he unwraps himself and gives you a push. You rock forward but don’t move further.

“Get some sleep,” he orders, serious, like he only does when you’re really lost in your head and he’s dragged you back out of a research session for water and food.

“And Kankri, when we next have downtime? Dirk and Roxy both have the most _wicked_ ideas about seals, an entirely different system, a different approach. I think that it might be the breakthrough that you need to help Sollux with incorporating his bees.”

You straighten, the promise like a bolt of lightning through your mind, awareness crackling at your edges.

“You can’t just expect me to sleep _now_!”

“Sl _eeeee_ p.” He intones, with an edge of the manic genin who would tell you horror stories throughout your shared watches. _Puppets. So many meat puppets._ He grins, crosses his arms, and pushes you in the direction of the Tent with nothing but his bloodline trait.

_“What? No goodnight kiss?”_

Dave sounds mock outraged, and oddly distant, as he is speaking through material, or on the other side of a wall. You don’t reply, though a smile quirks your face for a moment.

_“Kanky-panky, your boyfriend’s macking on your girlfriend, and she’s macking on him, but who’s macking on you? Like, this is kind of tragic, if by tragic you mean being the lone iceberg of no panky in the desert. I should tell you something, bro, you wanna know why Rose just jumped ship? ‘Cause that’s her best chance of getting lady lips any time in this millennium.”_

He doesn’t explain why he just jumped to you, and you don’t ask.

As it turns out, tuning out a stream of softly mumbled nonsense is an expedient way of falling asleep.


End file.
